


Those Who Remain

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Non-Canonical Character Death, Recovery, Serious Injuries, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 02:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16630712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: Curufin won't let go of his father, no matter the cost.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amyfortuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/gifts).



> I started writing this for ToT last year (with a different continuation in mind, which is still the actual continuation of chapter I to me, though I don't think I'll ever write it). I didn't finish it in time for ToT this year either, but at least it has a finished (if quick) continuation too.
> 
> Nelyo = Maedhros  
> Cáno = Maglor  
> Turco = Celegorm  
> Curvo = Curufin

Curufin swiftly climbed the winding staircase carved into the side of the mountain, his steps guided by the light of small Fëanorian lamps, hundreds of them, all of which he had personally crafted. The light leapt on the ripples of the water inside the small basin he carried. He stared at it as he went, at the ever-shifting sparkles and flashes, surging and swaying, dimly aware of the echo of his own steps, of the gentle thud of the basket hung from his shoulders rocking its contents of clean bandages, towels and ointments against his back.

A large room opened at the top of the staircase. Moths clung to the lamps attached to the many pillars that bore the weight of the mountain above. Some took flight as Curufin wound his way through the forest of stone, but immediately landed again, unable to resist the allure of the light. The birds which had made their nests inside the near-empty chamber clustered on the sill of the single long window that resembled a natural slit in the rock. The birds' fluttery shapes broke the narrow strip of sunlight that seeped in through the window and fell at the foot of a wide stone plinth.

His pace never changing, Curufin strode towards the plinth. He set the basin down next to it. He unslung the basket from his shoulders and opened it. Finally, he took a deep breath and allowed himself to look at the body stretched out on the smooth stone: his father's body – dead, but not lifeless. 

Fëanor's hair hung past the brim of his not-quite-deathbed again, sheeny black and luscious. His eyes moved rapidly under closed eyelids. His brow twitched from time to time. A new throw covered the rest of him, a richly embroidered one. Caranthir changed it regularly, each time the old one became too stained with the blood and pus that seeped through the bandages swathing their father's burned body. 

Nothing else had changed since the last time Curufin had visited the place, thirty days earlier. 

He let his fingers ghost over Fëanor's hollowed cheeks and over his colourless lips, set in a tight grimace since he had last closed them. Biting back a sob, he dropped to his knees and took his father's right hand from under the blanket. He pressed the hand to his mouth, kissed it, then pressed it to his cheek. He nuzzled against it, even though the unforgiving coldness of it made him shiver. He started rocking back and forth on his knees, murmuring words of love and entreating his father to come back, until the hand absorbed the heat of his own skin and almost almost made him hope.

He couldn't bring himself to let go until he suddenly became aware of the sound of steps behind him. 

He hastened to rise and turned.

Maedhros's silhouette appeared around one of the pillars, tall and unmistakable. Curufin frowned: Maedhros had no reason to be there. No reason that Curufin approved of, at any rate. 

“Curufinwë,” Maedhros called when he stood at the foot of the platform where the plinth stood and already towered over his younger brother. 

“Nelyafinwë.” Curufin moved to the edge of the platform, directly in Maedhros's way. “What brings you here?”

“Cáno told me you were making the trip again.”

Curufin cursed under his breath: of course Maglor would inform Maedhros. Of course Maglor would do whatever Maedhros asked of him. “So dependable, our dear Canafinwë. Well, you have no business here.”

“I do.” Maedhros paused, glancing beyond over Curufin's head. “Let Father go.”

“I won't do it and you know it. Now leave.”

Maedhros walked past Curufin, easily pushing him out of the way. He took one look at their father, at his hand hanging limply over the side of the plinth, at the stained bandages concealing his burned wrist and arm. He grimaced. “Can you not see? Father suffers, trapped inside an endlessly dying body.”

Curufin held his older brother's accusing gaze. Of course he knew, but there was no other option. They had no choice but to preserve what they had left of their father. The alternative was losing him entirely, and Curufin wasn't ready to accept that turn of events. He could live with his father's suffering, share in it, atone for it if necessary, but he could not live with his father's absence. He was thankful, that his father's soul lingered inside his body, clung to it against the laws of the world, against reason.

“Let him go,” Maedhros said again, slow and forceful.

“How can you ask me that?”

“Curvo, for heaven's sake! He is our Father and we are torturing him! You are torturing him. We must release him.”

“Where to?” Curufin challenged, his cheeks burning because Maedhros was not exaggerating. “Do you think Father would be happy in Mandos? What would he be free do to there? Would he suffer less? Or perhaps you intend for him to reach the everlasting darkness, and be lost to us for eternity.”

Maedhros shook his head.

“Nelyo, we can wake him up again, I'm sure. There must be a way.”

“Which way? Just tell me how you will do it, Curvo. How are you going to heal his body? It's been almost two hundred years, and you haven't come up with anything yet. Cáno can sing all the songs he wants, and you can try every last incantation the Sindar or the Tatyar have to offer, but Father won't wake up. How much longer do you want to keep deluding yourself?” Maedhros grabbed Curufin's wrist. “Father is dead, you can't remedy that.”

“He is not...as long as Father is with us, I have hope. I don't believe his soul would linger here for so long if he didn't want it to be so.”

“No Curvo, no. I came here to end this today.” 

Maedhros let go of Curufin's wrist, and unsheathed the longest of the three daggers attached to his belt.

Curufin looked from his brother to their father and to the dagger that Fëanor had made and gifted to him. “Very well, deliver the last blow. Kill Father if you will, but you will have to kill me first,” he said, and put himself between Maedhros and their father again.

“Curvo...”

“What are you waiting for? You came here so determined to betray Father.”

“It's _not_ betrayal.”

“You already betrayed Father once, why do you hesitate now?”

“Curvo! Not that again.” 

“You're the one who's always doing the right thing...except when you decided you could outsmart Moringotto by pretending to parley with him, that is.”

Maedhros swore. Curufin had meant to hurt, and succeeded. Curufin's gaze didn't waver. Maedhros's eyes slid to their father's face. He saw himself slitting Curufin's throat open with heir father's blade. Curufin would not put up any resistance. He was unarmed for one, and even if he had been armed he was no match for Maedhros's bulk. Curufin's face would lose colour, become pale and lifeless just like their father's. Maedhros looked away from it, up towards the lamps and the moths and down again, towards the chair standing unobtrusively against one of the pillars, under the runes carved all around it, where Caranthir sat, when he spent his idle hours watching over their father, working on a new blanket. Where Maglor sat, when he came to sing, though Maglor never spoke of those visits to him. 

He laid the flat of the blade on Curufin's chest.

“You think I don't wish it were possible to bring Father back?”

“I believe it's more feasible than it was for us to bring you back.”

Maedhros gave a rueful smirk. He put the dagger back in its sheath. “And who will do it in the end? An eagle of Manwë, or one of the Valar themselves?”

“The Valar and Maiar aren't the only powers in this world.” A little hesitantly, Curufin spread his hands on Maedhros's chest, but didn't push him back. He was trembling. “Now help me change the bandages, or leave.” 

Maedhros hugged him. Curufin went stiff for a moment, then released a shaky breath and burrowed gratefully in his older brother's chest.


	2. Chapter 2

When the north was lost, Curufin waited until it was exactly a month since he had last visited his father then set out to visit him as he had always done. 

He didn't come back. 

“You couldn't have stopped him,” Maglor told Maedhros, while Meadhros took out his anger on the trees and rocks of northern Ossiriand. 

For all of Curufin's stubbornness, it was unlikely that he had chosen not to go back to his brothers. He couldn't fulfil the Oath by staying with their father, and he knew just as well as Maglor did that Maedhros could not keep him under constant watch and prevent him from making the trip again.

It wasn't hard to guess what must have happened: Morgoth must have captured him, and if he had captured Curufin he might know about the body too. Perhaps he had seized that as well, or perhaps he had left it where it was, to be a bait.

Maedhros was sure Celegorm would be next. He even considered killing him himself rather than let him leave to look for Curufin, whenever he let his gaze wander towards the north and his mind was all too quick to provide samples of what Curufin might be going through.

Celegorm didn't leave, and in the end Maedhros had to ask him why. 

“Why haven't you followed him?”

Celegorm replied very quietly, wringing his hands with his blood-shot eyes uncharacteristically downcast. “He forced me to swear I wouldn't, on Father's love.”

“But _why_ did you swear?”

“The thing is...” Celegorm licked blood off his cracked lips and steadied himself to look his brother in the eye. “Nelyo, I don't think Curvo went to see Father. If he had wanted to do that, I could have gone with him and not even the birds would have spotted us.”

“You can't mean that he –” 

“He told me he had a...vision, a vision where Father woke up in a sea of light. Maybe he convinced himself he could get a Silmaril if he went alone. Or –” Celegorm shrugged “– maybe he merely wanted an end. Look at us, we have nothing left to hope for.”

Maedhros wasn't ready to live with that. He wasn't ready to live with Curufin's choice. “You _should_ have stopped him.”

Celegorm kept his second oath as he did the first, but he became restive, and careless in the hunt. After a botched encounter with a boar, he lost the full use of one of his legs. 

Caranthir looked after him. The change was less apparent in him, but Caranthir too had a hard time coping with the loss of both Curufin and their father. The days he had spent next to their father's sleeping body had meant more to him than Maedhros had imagined. Caranthir hardly ever spoke now, and spent as much time as he could stitching together blankets that his father would never have from old rags and worn out clothes. 

Celegorm was so weak by the time they set out to attack Doriath that Maedhros didn't trust to bring him along, and left Caranthir with him. 

Thingol's death and the Dwarves' attack on Doriath were an unexpected boon. Maedhros and the twins had been making plans to retrieve the Silmaril from Lúthien without upsetting the peace of Ossiriand, but Lúthien and her husband died too soon, and before they knew it the Silmaril was back in Doriath. 

Díor refused to even speak to them, and so a full-fledged attack on Doriath was their only recourse.

Getting the gem back was their last hope. With it, they might regain the north and keep orcs out of Eastern Beleriand, and maybe even be able to attack Morgoth and rescue Curufin. Maybe the Silmaril could really wake their father up. Maedhros would let Celegorm keep the Silmaril, and the gem would gift him a tiny spark joy and some comfort, prove to him that his big brother had ways to bring hope back.

The Silmaril escaped them.

They attacked Sirion, but the Silmaril once again remained out of their reach.

When it appeared in the night sky, Celegorm screamed and hurt himself and the twins had to drug him to make him stop. He was so beside himself that Maedhros judged it best to send Elwing's sons away, before he could hurt them too. 

“You would have done the same,” Celegorm said over a meal, when scratches and cuts were still red-raw on the skin of his face and arms.

“Maybe,” Maedhros admitted, nipping at a chunk of cold meat with little enthusiasm. Food was scarce, but he rarely had any appetite. Besides, Angband had taught him to feed on nothings. 

Celegorm wasn't wrong: he too had been tempted to take his revenge on their mother, their grandfather and great-grandmother and her father on the boys, even if Maglor had become attached to them.

“We could have tried trading them with Morgoth to get Curvo back. I'm sure Morgoth would have loved to take his revenge on Lúthien's line, too.”

“I hope Curvo is dead,” Maedhros said flatly. He handed Celegorm the half-eaten chunk of meat. Thinking of Curufin always meant thinking of their father too, and he couldn't help himself from blurting, “...could you not...ask one of your bird friends to check if Father is safe?”

“I would have to explain to them where to look. And they avoid going that far up north. There's nothing for them there, either.”

On top of setting the Silmaril among the stars, forever beyond their reach, the Valar also sent a host, an uncursed host that didn't see its march through Beleriand thwarted by the Valar's own design.

Eärendil, with the Silmaril on his brow, slew the great dragon Ancalagon, but as the dragon fell a black shape rose behind the beast. It was similar to a balrog, but greater in size and made of darkness rather than fire. 

Its eyes were peculiar, mottled grey shining forth in stark contrast to the black of its face and horns.

There was no mistaking whose eyes they were. 

“No, no...” Maedhros clamped his hand onto his mouth the moment he recognised them. He stood and watched, powerless to do anything except pray that Caranthir had managed to get Celegorm to rest back in their encampment and Celegorm was not looking at the the battle taking place over their heads. He stood and watched, sinking his teeth in his lower lip, wondering how he was going to tell Celegorm that he had found out what happened to their little brother if Celegorm didn't see it for himself.

The monster that had Curufin's eyes loomed over the ship. It caught Eärendil and tore the Silmaril from him, before delivering him and Vingilot to the same long fall and crash that had sealed Ancalagon's fate. 

The monster that was still Curufin gave a heart-piercing cry and shot through the sky, east-bound, clutching the Silmaril to its chest.

Its cries trailed after him, and echoed over the din of war, while it flew up the stairs Curufin knew so well. 

Morgoth had not been able to stifle consciousness, but he had trapped it in a body he couldn't control. The love for his father had endured through the pain, the constant churning and heaving as if he needed to throw up and couldn't, as if he were on the verge of drowning with every breath he took. Now, with the Silmaril in his hands, the thought of his father and the single-minded desire to bring him back to life took over, quashing even Morgoth's waning might. 

Curufin made it to the room at top of the stairs but before he could so much as take a step the Silmaril slipped from his hands and skittered on the floor away from him, coming to a halt halfway between himself and his father. 

Light burst forth, like a firework, like a wall between Curufin and his father. 

He tried to go past it, to at least at least gaze upon his father's face once again and kiss him one last time, but the light pushed him back.

The light warred against the malice of Morgoth that had re-shaped him, and he burned. Again and again he attempted to crawl towards the plinth, desperately reaching out with his arms towards his father's body hidden behind the pillars which gradually lost their shape and became only a blurry splotch of colour in a world too white. 

The light slowly consumed him, until he became only pain, and then nothing at all.

********

“Get this out of my way!” Maedhros ordered impatiently, while the earth started shaking under their feet again and bits of rock fell from the ceiling. The soldiers hurried to smash the boulder enough that Maedhros could slip past it, Maglor and Caranthir in tow.

In the room at the top of the stairs, some of the lamps where scattered, undamaged, on the floor and a couple of the pillars had been toppled. 

Maedhros slowed down.

Maglor strode past him and climbed over the broken sections of Dwarves-hewn stone. His footsteps came to a sudden halt.

Maedhros hesitated. He looked back at the soldiers slowly trickling into the room, the strongest he still had, who were all haggard and frightened. He had been selfish to take them here. Even if Morgoth had been defeated, bands of stray orcs still roamed Beleriand and earthquakes and floods were destroying the land. But he couldn't live with doubt.

He had to know. 

He forced himself to climb over the broken pillars. 

Caranthir trailed wordlessly after him. 

Their father's corpse was not on the plinth.

Fëanor sat against it, his head bent to one side, wrapped up in the last blanket Caranthir had made for him all those decades ago. He stirred when he heard Maedhros and Caranthir cry out and looked up with sunken eyes that struggled to stay open even in the dim light of that crumbling sanctuary.

“My sons...” he croaked, and a feeble smile stretched his parched lips. “I was praying you –...”

Maedhros was sure he bit back a sob, but heard a very similar sound: a baby's yelp. He hurriedly drew closer, striding past Maglor who seemed rooted to the spot where he had halted. 

Fëanor held a baby in his arms and the baby held the Silmaril between chubby hands, his smile as bright as the light. 

“How –...what happened?”

“You tell...me.” Fëanor was seized by a fit of coughing. 

“Quick, give him some water,” Maglor said, but still didn't move. 

Caranthir came forward, half-fell half-knelt on the ground, bringing his water-skin to his father's lips. “Is that...Curvo?” he asked Maedhros, while Fëanor drank avidly of the water.

“He must be,” Maedhros whispered. “He has to be,” he repeated, still dazed but daring to believe that what he had before his eyes was not a hallucination. The heap of discarded rust-coloured bandages behind his father was real enough, as was their smell.

There was a booming sound and of the pillars quaked and screeched. 

“Let's get out of here, we can talk later.” Maglor finally moved. Kneeling next to Caranthir in front of their father, he chanted the brief incantation he had sung countless times to put the wounded and the grieving to sleep and took the baby from his father's arms, hurrying away with him and with the Silmaril safely cradled against his chest, shielding both from falling debris. 

Caranthir dropped the empty water-skin and lifted Fëanor, careful not to let the blanket slip from around him. He stood, and when he was sure of his balance, gingerly slung his father over his shoulder.

“Are you sure you can carry him?” Maedhros asked.

Caranthir nodded, his eyes glazed with tears of joy and renewed strength: with their father he could go anywhere.

***

In the encampment hidden in the gloom of the Taur-im-Duinath, they found the other two Silmarils waiting for them.

Maedhros, who rode ahead of the party to deliver the news and order the healers to get a bed and medicines ready for their father, was barraged with the twins' justifications before he had a chance to say anything more meaningful than a greeting. 

“Our spies informed us that the host of the Valar was about to set sail for Valinor again, we couldn't wait for you to get back. I _know_ you told us not to do anything rash in your absence, but if we didn't go get them when we did we would have lost them.”

“You did get them?”

“Yes.” 

“Nothing went wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Maedhros narrowed his eyes at them.

Amrod lifted both hands in a defensive gesture, his only remaining eye unblinking. “We had to kill some guards...one looked a lot like uncle Arafinwë but it could just have been one of Ingwë's folk and –”

Maedhros silenced him with a wave of the pointed gauntlet covering his stump. “Never mind. You did well.” The twins shared a surprised look: Maedhros-the-warlord had never been lenient with subordinates who disobeyed a direct order. “Where's Turco?” Maedhros went on to ask, noticing that Celegorm's tent stood open and no fire was lit inside it. 

Amras pointed to the clearing on the other side of their camp. “You don't want to see the Silmarils?”

“Later. I have news for the three of you.”

Celegorm sat on the ground, his eyes fixed on muddy puddles of water that never completely dried up in the forest, with Celebrimbor at his side.

“Tyelpo came because...” Amrod started, but Amras had to finish for him. “He recognised Curvo too.” 

Maedhros nodded to Celebrimbor but all of his attention was on Celegorm. He stood before him and pulled him to his feet – which would have been a feat if Celegorm had been his old hardy self. “Turco, listen to me,” he said and waited patiently for Celegorm's tired eyes to focus on him. “Father is awake!”

“Father?”

Maedhros smiled, pausing to take in the twins' incredulous gasps then went on, his own voice betraying his emotion. “Yes! And that is not all...Curvo is with him.”

Celegorm blinked several times, but his eyes filled with tears nonetheless. “Curvo...is well?”

“More or less, you'll see soon.”

Maglor handed Celegorm the baby in Maedhros's tent, then hastily left again in search of someone or something to feed him. 

Celegorm observed his little brother in awed silence for a while. He had been 23 when Curufin was born and his recollection of him as a baby was hazy to say the least. He had been unimpressed back then, because Caranthir had been born just a few years earlier, and both babies were just dark haired and noisy to him. He looked up at Maedhros. “Is it really him?”

Maedhros sat down next to him, wrapping his good arm around his shoulders. “It must be. Curufin took the Silmaril from Eärendil, we all saw it. He brought it to Father, and the Silmaril saved them both.” 

On the other side of the tent, the twins were tending to Fëanor. Fëanor didn't have any apparent wounds, but though the Silmaril had prevented him from starving to death, he was extremely weak. He came to, while the twins washed the dirt off him and looked him over to make absolutely sure he was uninjured and didn't need anything more than the coimas they had asked Caranthir to fetch in order to regain his strength. He lost consciousness again moments later with Amrod and Amras pressing kisses to his face. 

He went on like that, waking for a moment and dozing off again, for the rest of the day and through the night, even after his sons all succumbed to sleep.

Celebrimbor took their place at his bedside.

When Fëanor came to again and saw him, his sunken face lit up with indescribable joy. “Tyelpo...you're so big now.”

“You never made me that present for my fiftieth begetting day,” Celebrimbor murmured. 

His last conversation with his grandfather hadn't been about kinslaying or burnt ships and not even about war, but about his goals and aspirations. 

Fëanor frowned as the memory came back to him. “I'm sorry.”

“You have to make many many others presents for me.”

“How long was I –...”

“Too long.”

Fëanor looked around until he spotted Curufin, asleep in a makeshift cradle nestled on a pile of furs between the twins. “What happened to your father?”

“I don't know, but it has to do with Morgoth,” Celebrimbor answered truthfully enough. “How did you wake up?” he hastily asked in turn.

“...There was...light, so much light, it was so warm and peaceful, and for a moment I thought the Darkening and everything else had been only a bad dream. Then I heard a baby crying. I sat up, and I didn't recognise the place I was in, and I knew that something had gone terribly wrong.”

Celebrimbor nodded. He stood up, broke off a small bite of coimas and dipped in a warm concoction, as the twins had instructed him to. Fëanor ate it eagerly despite its bitter taste. 

“Rest now, grandfather.”

The next day they hastened out Beleriand, heading south. They stopped a few days later in a land of mountains and rivers not far from the sea, but when it became clear that Fëanor's recovery would take long, and that stopping for more than a few hours gave him the chance to tire himself by asking questions and worrying, they decided to push on. They travelled further south, along the coast past a desert and to a land of gentle warmth and lush, vibrant vegetation that beckoned them to make their home within it.

********

“Do you think Curvo will be alright?” Maedhros asked leaning forward in his wicker chair by the bed. He was still unused to the freedom of movement from not having to wear several layers of clothing and pieces of metal and leather, though it also felt like he had lost his hand all over again since it made no sense to wear his gauntlet in their new, roomy home made almost entirely of wood.

“You told me the Valar captured Morgoth, I do hope they won't let him loose again any time soon.” 

“But what if Morgoth's influence isn't completely gone?”

“Whatever Morgoth did to him, the Silmaril purified him of it. The two powers cannot coexist. Curvo's rebirth is proof enough of that.”

“What if he isn't the same person he used to be?”

Fëanor paused to gaze down at Curufin, who played with the three Silmarils on the bed next to him. He picked them up and put them down again, swapping their positions, yipping and clapping his hands as sparks of light danced on his chubby face.

“I will love him regardless.”

“Of course, I will too. I didn't mean –” 

“What if he grows a pair of horns and maybe a tail and all that? Then he will be the most beautiful elven demon one could ever imagine. A demon of light, perhaps.”

Maedhros bit the corner of his lip, but could not hide the faint smile his father's words elicited. “To think that a Silmaril would have been enough to bring you back. Of course the thought did come into my mind, but it seemed too simple, too much like wishful thinking. All those years...”

Fëanor shushed Maedhros. He did not hide that the long years he had spent in the murky space between body and soul had been far from pleasant. Even now he sometimes had nightmares where he was still trapped in a maze with no exit, but the nightmares were fleeting, and he shook them off. His own strength was flowing back to him from the Silmarils, from his sons' presence, from the warmth and bounty of that unsullied corner of the world.

“It was far from simple.”

“I should never have let the Silmaril get to Elwë. If I had somehow taken it and woken you up Curvo would never –”

“Nelyo,” Fëanor put a hand to Maedhros cheek and nudged him to make eye contact, then grabbed Maedhros's hand. “If I had not all-but-died you wouldn't have had to do any of that.”

Maedhros squeezed his father's hand back. “But you didn't mean to die.”

“It happened, and I could have avoided it. You did the best you could do, given the circumstances. Stop tormenting yourself.”

“If I could be sure Curvo was going to be fine I could do that. But not knowing what his life will be like is excruciating. I hope that if he does remember...everything, the memories won't come back too soon. It's – it's an awful thing to say, but sometimes I still feel like I should have let you die if it was the only way to spare Curvo all that suffering. Of course, Curvo would have hated me,” he added with a nervous laugh, “and he did turn out to be right.”

To his relief, his father nodded. Maedhros bent and kissed his father's hand. 

“My beloved, brave Nelyo,” Fëanor said softly. “At times I wished desperately for death, but the thought of you held me back. It's the hardest thing to live with, knowing that you all went through so much pain for my sake, how close you too came to death while I couldn't do anything. It also makes me proud. You all had to make terrible choices, and I love you more than ever before for it.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the merry sound of Caranthir and Celegorm's banter wafting up to them from the garden through the open doors. Soon their silhouettes appeared beyond the mosquito nets hung up all around the bed. Caranthir and Celegorm breezed through them, an arm wrapped around the other's waist, both flushed and laughing. Celegorm had recovered quickly after Fëanor and Curufin's return, after Beleriand sank into the ocean to become just a memory. He could now walk without much trouble on good days, and good days outnumbered the bad.

“Time to go on a walk, Father!” he said. “The night is cool and there are a few critters who would like to meet you.” 

“Does Curvo want to come with us?” Caranthir let go of Celegorm and attempted to lift Curufin from the bed, which prompted a very loud wail of protest.

Fëanor laughed, cooing Curufin as Caranthir put him back down. “Who wants to meet me tonight? A grumpy lady spider or a mistrustful owl?”

“You'll see!”

Fëanor left with Celegorm and Caranthir, walking between them in case he needed their support, though he had already become much steadier on his legs. 

Maedhros moved on the bed with Curufin and watched them mingle with the trees beyond the fence. Curufin kept playing with the Silmarils for a little while longer. When he lost interest he crawled atop of his brother and caught fistfuls of his hair. “Ta – ta ta – ta!” he started babbling.

Maedhros chuckled. “You refused to be carried along but the moment you realise Father is gone you want to go.”

He stood up, gave one of the Silmarils to Curufin to hold and put the other two in the pocket of his trousers. He didn't trust to leave them unattended, and also wanted Curufin to always be close to them, just in case. He carefully lifted Curufin with his good arm and wrapped his stump around him. Celebrimbor still had the notes and calculations Curufin had jotted down for the crafting of an artificial hand for him, and claimed that once he gathered the materials he could start making prototypes at long last. 

“I hope he manages to make it,” Maedhros whispered, as he stepped from the veranda down into the garden. He gathered air in his lungs and let out a long modulated whistle, the kind they had often used to communicate in Beleriand.

Curufin yelped excitedly.

Maedhros smiled and kissed the top of his head. “This time I _will_ protect you, no matter what.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things I had in mind while writing this:
> 
> \- I headcanon Curufin had a certain degree of foresight (he wasn't making things up when he told Eöl things wouldn't go well for him in Gondolin or when he described the ruin of Nargothrond)  
> \- Morgoth had dispersed a lot of his power by the late First Age (he isn't able to defend himself at all during the War of Wrath)  
> \- the place where Fëanor's body was hidden was built by the Dwarves and there was a ton of Dwarven enchantments in place  
> \- the Silmarils were made of Fëanor's “lore” “subtle craft” and “power” (canonically), and as much as the very biased narrative tries to claim they didn't belong to him (and to his sons), the Silmarils are 100% Fëanor's thing  
> \- I'm not too knowledgeable about the War of Wrath, but I headcanon that the host of the Valar kept mostly to the west of Beleriand while the Fëanorians (and Green Elves and Avari) continued doing what they could in the east
> 
> My tumblr is [nathair-nimhe.tumblr.com](http://nathair-nimhe.tumblr.com)


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